Rachel Dratch Just Became the Spice Girl Autumn Was Missing
Pumpkin Spice has officially entered her pop-star era. Dunkin’ has recruited comedy legend Rachel Dratch to play the supposedly long-lost sixth member of the Spice Girls, reuniting her with Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton and Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell-Horner for a gloriously ridiculous fall campaign.
The joke is simple and immediately works: before the Spice Girls conquered the world as a five-piece, there was apparently another member nobody talks about anymore. Her name? Pumpkin Spice. Naturally, Dratch plays her like a diva who was simply too seasonal for her own time.
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Pumpkin Spice Finally Gets Her Pop Comeback
Rachel Dratch, Baby Spice and Ginger Spice turn Dunkin’s fall menu into a fake girl-group reunion we did not know we needed.
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In Dunkin’s hero spot, Bunton and Halliwell-Horner sit down for a mock-documentary-style interview and reminisce about their mysterious former bandmate. Pumpkin Spice, they explain, had her own catalogue of aggressively autumnal hits, including titles like “Bumpin’ Pumpkins”, and choreography that was apparently very ahead of its time.
Dratch then appears in a magnificently over-the-top orange costume and commits completely to the bit, fake British accent and all. Her fictional reason for leaving the group is even better: she abandoned pop stardom to focus on lattes.
That may be the most Rachel Dratch sentence ever written. The former Saturday Night Live standout has spent years making characters funnier simply by taking their absurdity seriously, and Pumpkin Spice fits squarely in that tradition. Dratch told People the concept felt like an SNL sketch “in the best way,” and she praised the giant pumpkin-inspired costume for doing half the character work before she even opened her mouth.
Even better, Dratch filmed the campaign with Bunton and Halliwell-Horner in London. She said the real Spice Girls were relaxed and down-to-earth, which apparently left Pumpkin Spice as the biggest diva on set. That sounds correct.
The whole thing is built around Dunkin’s fall menu, which returned in August with the Pumpkin Spice Signature Latte and other seasonal drinks and bakery items. The campaign launch on September 8 also came with a one-day promotion offering a free medium Pumpkin Spice Signature Latte with a qualifying purchase during select afternoon hours.
But the celebrity casting is doing most of the heavy lifting here. Bunton and Halliwell-Horner are not simply cameoing as generic pop stars — the entire campaign mines Spice Girls mythology, complete with the language of secret former members, invented songs and faux archival history.
And Dratch is exactly the right outsider to drop into that mythology. She is a Massachusetts native, a genuine pumpkin-spice fan and one of those performers who can make a ridiculous character feel oddly specific within seconds. She even joked that Pumpkin Spice was simply ahead of her time — maybe too seasonal, but committed.
There is also something charmingly full-circle about Baby Spice and Ginger Spice playing along this enthusiastically nearly three decades after “Wannabe” turned the original five into global pop royalty. The campaign does not need all five members present to land the joke. Two actual Spice Girls, one very orange Rachel Dratch and a completely fake pop-history scandal are plenty.
So zig-a-zig-ah, indeed. Pumpkin Spice has finally gotten her comeback, and apparently all it took was leaving the music business, finding herself through lattes and waiting for autumn to catch up with her vision.
Watch Rachel Dratch Become Pumpkin Spice With Baby Spice and Ginger Spice
Dunkin’s fall campaign stars Dratch as the fictional sixth Spice Girl alongside Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell-Horner.
Source: Dunkin’; People.
